It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

------------ Kenneth Grahame

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Invasives

Stark Street goes feral for a few moments.East from 60th Avenue she climbs up the shoulder of Mt Tabor, curving up in a cutting, shimmying north,

and then bucking south, before becoming prim again, a straight Gresham thoroughfare, smoothing her skirts: butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

But when she goes wild on the hill, all bets are off. Thickets of invasives everywhere. The slopes too steep for proper lawns: blackberry strangles the shrubbery; ivy throttles the trees.

Martha points out to methe massive stems of dead clematis,dangling like Richard of York's head from the city gate.

Are they left there for a warning? I askShe answers no, when they're that bigit's too dangerous to pull the vines down. You don't knowwhat's up there that will come down with them.

So you cut them at the roots and leave them there,more like thick and stranded rope than branches,gray as the sinews of an oxfreeze-dried on the Oregon trail. They sway

and shiver and twist, and do little grisly dancesin the Spring rain. The war goes on: York roses,Lancaster roses, lickspittle playwrights, virgin queens,white skeletons twined with the living wood.